An evolutionary take on (im)politeness

Three broad developments in the marking out of socio-proxemic space

Marcel Bax | University of Groningen

This paper is intended as an overall template of the evolution of (im)politeness. It elucidates how (linguistic) rapport management originated and developed over time, and tries to come to grips with (some of) the sociocultural factors behind such changes. Taking its point of departure in human prehistory (Section 1), the paper argues that, contrary to received wisdom, politeness and impoliteness are not two sides of the same coin (Section 2), and it discusses the dissimilar evolutionary antecedents of politeness and impoliteness (Sections 3 and 4). The paper then maps out three broad-scale diachronic trends regarding the conveyance of interpersonal distance, ipso facto the marking out of socio-proxemic interactional space; namely, (a) from performative to verbal, (b) from self-display to other-concern and (c) from collectivity-oriented to individual-oriented (Section 5).

Keywords: (im)politeness, historical (im)politeness, cultural evolution, pragmatic development, facework

Published online: 07 June 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.12.1-2.11bax

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Constantinescu, Mihaela-Viorica

2018. A perspective on “impoliteness” in early modern Romanian court and diplomatic interactions. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 19:1 ► pp. 92 ff.

Kádár, Dániel Z.

2013. In Handbook of Pragmatics, ► pp. 1 ff.

Saltamacchia, Francesca & Andrea Rocci

2019. In Politeness in Nineteenth-Century Europe [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 299], ► pp. 75 ff.

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